Legislators should close this loophole

The Iowa City Community School District has a lack of competitive bidding policies pertaining to service contracts. For more than two decades, the district has used one vendor for its grounds maintenance. During this uninterrupted stretch, the district has no record of a second bid. Only one vendor, one bid, one contract.

This year during a rebidding of the contract, there was a problem with an email to the Press-Citizen. David Dude, the district's chief operations officer, explained, "The Press-Citizen was notified of the RFP, and a link was posted on our homepage. Unfortunately, something happened with the email to the Press-Citizen, so notification of the RFP never appeared in the newspaper. This is obviously unfortunate, but not a violation of law or policy."

Not a violation of law or policy?! It should be a violation of the law, and it should be policy that we publicly advertise.

It should be obvious to everyone involved that public notification, through the newspapers as well as online, only serves the public good and encourages competition.

Legislators should require service contracts by governmental entities to meet the same standards for public construction contracts - which require any public improvement contract with an estimated cost of $125,000 or greater be advertised for sealed bids by publishing a notice to bidders.

The notice to bidders shall be published at least once, not less than four and not more than 45 days before the date for filing bids, in a newspaper published at least once weekly and having a general circulation in the local area.

Governmental entities can adjust the monetary threshold lower if they wish, but at a bare minimum, this will help to protect taxpayers from governmental bodies who do not take their fiduciary responsibilities seriously.

We are looking to stretch every dollar possible. There must be a mechanism that will force those who will not seek competition to do so.

Phil Hemingway

Iowa City

ADVERTISEMENT

Most Popular

Most Commented

More Headlines

Most Viewed

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

Email this article

Legislators should close this loophole

The Iowa City Community School District has a lack of competitive bidding policies pertaining to service contracts. For more than two decades, the district has used one vendor for its grounds